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Gardening in central Texas is great – and such a change from trying to grow anything in northern California! Here it’s hot, it’s humid, Spring is at least a month of heavy rain alternating with hot sunny days – basically, a little heaven on Earth for all those fruits and veggies that are waiting to take flight.

However, I must be honest… last year’s garden didn’t go so well. There was quite a learning curve for me. This year, though, it seems either I have figured it out, or the plants have. In the last week, I have harvested 1lb of hatch chiles, 15 padron peppers, 1lb of mixed pole beans, multiple pounds of zucchini, 4 pumpkins, and a single 1.5lb eggplant.

Next weeks harvest should be about the same, maybe more.

So my big job now is to figure out how to use all this before next weeks harvests fills my fridge all over again.

Beans and Eggs

This is a simple recipe that seems a lot fancier than it is. I like it for lunch, but it can be used for brunch, dinner, whenever.

Double or triple the sauce to keep the extra on hand in the fridge; reuse it for rice, salad, marinades etc.. Keep the more unusual ingredients on hand in your pantry; they’re so versatile and great to have around when a dish is lacking that unidentifiable pizzazz.

Some of the ingredients sound elite, but most are available at your local Whole Foods or asian grocery stores and – true story – Amazon actually carries all of them. Worse comes to worst, many can be substituted with more ubiquitous products, noted at the end of this article.

Make your dressing first and set aside so you can pay attention to the eggs and beans. Recipe is for 2 people. Adjust amount of beans and eggs as necessary.

Mixed Pole Beans, Soy-Yuzu Dressing, Soft Poached Eggs

Dressing

Whisk together the following; taste and adjust as necessary, set aside

Remove from water, quickly stop the cooking process by shocking in bowl of ice, then while still warm, toss with coarse citrus salt (substitute coarse sea salt), coat heavily with dressing (saving the extra) and plate in shallow bowl

Poached Eggs

Bring pot of water with tablespoon of rice vinegar to a strong simmer.

While my husband slept late and my dad made us all tea and avocado toast, my mom and I spent New Years morning experimenting with roasted lemon.

It’s incredibly easy and inexpensive: grab a few lemons, slice them, half them, quarter them or chop into large squares, toss with olive oil, fresh thyme, salt and pepper and toss into an oven that has been preheated to 425 and wait for them to brown.

My mom uses the crispy browned slices as a snack, but I like to chop them up and toss them into arugula salad, cream sauce, with roasted broccoli or Brussels sprouts, stirred into hummus etc. . Remember the peel and rind are the best parts now that they’re cooked!
Give it a try and let me know how you like to use them!

Sorghum molasses is a sweet syrup made from sorghum grass. It’s a common non-sugar sweetener throughout the south, and it’s often compared to honey. It’s thick and sticky like true honey, but the flavor is much much deeper. You can find it labeled as both “sorghum syrup” and “sorghum molasses”. As long as you are sure that it has no added sugar, they are mostly the same. I do prefer the molasses because it is cooked down longer, making it thicker, darker, more concentrated and so much fuller and richer. Sorghum itself (the grass) is also processed into a flour to use as a gluten-free replacement. It does a good job of mimicking the taste of wheat without being as dense as flax or spelt.

It is pretty regularly available at fancy-pants markets (aka “specialty stores) – most Whole Foods carry it, and Amazon has a number of options; just make sure that whatever you choose doesn’t have any added sugars (be it the syrup or molasses).

Here is a quick recipe (seriously, like 5 minutes) to mix up and use on EVERYTHING.

1/4 cup sorghum molasses (+ more by the teaspoon if you want it richer)

2 decent pinches of coarse grey salt

Use the bread paddle for a KitchenAid to slightly whip the butter in the mixer (if you do not have a KitchenAid, a hand mixer will work just fine)

Slowly add in the sorghum and salt, whipping continuously

Done.

My favorite use is on crunchy, sweet wheat toast with soft boiled eggs from my lovely backyard ladiesSorghum syrup is pretty regularly available at fancy-pants markets (aka “specialty stores) – most Whole Foods carry it, and Amazon has a number of options; just make sure that whatever option you choose doesn’t have any added sugars (be it the syrup or molasses).

Try it…

on roasted corn

with toasty biscuits, cornbread, pancakes or waffles

mix into a mild mac n’ cheese

as a substitute for any sweetener

as a condiment put out to a table full of food (you’ll just put it on everything)

Okay, it’s true – I have a little bit of a hot sauce problem. But how can you blame me?! It’s the nectar of the Gods and offers us such amazingly tasty treats as Buffalo sauce! Of course, you can use any vinegar based hot sauce as the base for Buffalo sauce, but I would be wary of telling anyone you used anything but Franks’s. It’s just not right. It’s like using a cactus and the color pink to decorate for Christmas. Yes, it works. But is it right?

It’s almost so easy it doesn’t even need a recipe. Almost. What makes it deserving of a recipe is the little flair you can add to it to pizzazz it up and make it more than just Franks Red Hot and butter. I hear a lot of people say that’s all they do – melt the butter and add hot sauce. NO! You know you can do better than that. And, while you’re at it, why not break out of the box and use the sauce in a new way? Wings? That’s been done. Try something else.

Non-wing things you can do with this Buffalo sauce:

Toss with pulled chicken thigh and serve with saltine crackers, celery, and extra blue cheese for a super simple but super impressive party snack.

Make the best pizza ever using Buffalo sauce as the base, chicken pieces, cheddar cheese, blue cheese, very thinly sliced celery and – for the win – onion rings right on top!

Toss with pulled chicken, and spread between two pieces of bread with cheddar or mozzarella cheese for one OUTRAGEOUS grilled cheese. Serve with blue cheese dressing for dipping those sandwich corners!

In a large sauce pan, melt the butter slowly without browning; add hot sauce and whisk together to blend. Once blended, whisk in the rest of ingredients except for cheese and simmer on low, whisking occasionally until dry ingredients are fully dissolved and integrated – about 4 minutes. Then, add blue cheese and whisk slowly until mostly melted in and smooth.Once done, give it a taste test and adjust seasoning as desired, noting that salt is probably not needed because of the saltiness of both the blue cheese and the Worcestershire sauce.

If you’ve never had Tasso ham before, it probably means that you don’t live anywhere near the south. Before visiting New Orleans and moving to Texas, I had only heard about it in Emeril recipes, always to be followed by the obligatory asterisk – “*if Tasso is unavailable, substitute with bacon or ham”. I suppose it’s a little true – if Tasso is totally unavailable, bacon is better than nothing – but I surely wouldn’t call it a substitute. Tasso is it’s own beautiful, wonderful, glorious beast that allows no substitution.

It is important to note that while it’s called “Tasso Ham”, it is not actually “ham”. Ham is made from the hind leg of the pig, while Tasso is traditionally made from the shoulder. As many of the best southern traditions have been, it was created out of necessity – a way to use up the left over scraps of the least used cut of the whole pig.

A good way to get a better perspective on how any traditional dish is supposed to be made is to think about that – how it started, where it came from. Then, grab Michael Ruhlman’s “Charcuterie” as a great reference and read as many additional recipes as possible. Everyone does it a little bit different.

Here is my way:

First, make sure you have a large enough pan (or pans) to hold all of the meat comfortably without overlapping. Cut up the big pork butt into large, thick pieces, leaving on all the fat and cutting against the grain.

Next, give the meat a good salt cure:
2 parts kosher salt to 1 part white granulated sugar. (Enough to fully cover the meat in a thick, even coating.) Pour the salt cure as evenly as possible and massage into the pork, leaving a fairly thick coating. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Third, while the meat is curing, mix up your dry rub with the following ingredients to your preferred taste:

Ground white pepper

Ground black pepper

Ground cayenne pepper

Ground allspice

Ground paprika

Garlic powder

Onion powder

Dried thyme

Dried oregano

Then, after 3-4 hours refrigerated, rinse the cure off of the meat, dry with paper towel and and cover with a nice hefty coating of the dry rub; cover and refrigerate to cure overnight.

Finally, while the shoulder is sitting in the fridge, find access to an awesome smoker.

If you don’t have access to a smoker, you can use your oven. In order to get an imitation of the rich smokey flavor that is so important, try wrapping smoking chips in tin foil and putting on the bottom of your oven, on the rack beneath the meat. Heat the oven to 220 degrees, make sure the heat is nice and steady, and put the pork in for 4 or so hours. Try your best not to open the door to look at it so you can maintain that good steady heat.

If you do have access to a smoker, I suggest using pecan chips and if you can control the heat, try to keep it at 220. Cram the meat in there with excitement and don’t open the smoker for 3 hours.

To check the done-ness of the pork (smoker or oven) use a meat thermometer, which should read somewhere between 150 – 180 degrees. Poke the meat a little as its finishing to see how done it is: is it solid but tender? Then it’s good to go.